Managing In The Middle

Fully a third of all library supervisors are “managing in the middle:” reporting to top-level managers while managing teams of peers or paraprofessional staff in some capacity. This practical handbook is here to assist middle managers navigate their way through the challenges of multitasking and continual gear-shifting. The broad range of contributors from academic and public libraries in this volume help librarians face personal and professional challenges by Linking theoretical ideas about mid-level management to real-world situations Presenting ways to sharpen crucial skills such as communication, productivity, delegation, and performance management Offering specific advice on everything from supervision to surviving layoffsBeing a middle manager can be a difficult job, but the range of perspectives in this book offer strategies and tips to make it easier.

The definitive playbook for driving impact as a middle manager Leading from the Middle: A Playbook for Managers to Influence Up, Down, and Across the Organization delivers an insightful and practical guide for the backbone of an organization: those who have a boss and are a boss and must lead from the messy middle. Accomplished author and former P&G executive Scott Mautz walks readers through the unique challenges facing these managers, and the mindset and skillset necessary for managing up and down and influencing what happens across the organization. You’ll learn the winning mindset of the best middle managers, how to develop the most important skills necessary for managing from the middle, how to create your personal Middle Action Plan (MAP), and effectively influence: Up the chain of command, to your boss and those above them Down, to your direct reports and teams who report to you Laterally, to peers and teams you have no formal authority over Anyone in an organization who reports to someone and has someone reporting to them must lead from the middle. They are the most important group in an organization and have a unique opportunity to drive impact. Leading from the Middle explains how.

Managing and leading a remote team of line managers is the most challenging aspect of the middle manager role. It is quite normal for middle managers to see line managers infrequently and when they do, middle managers very rarely see their line managers 'on the job'. On the occasions when middle managers attend a line manager's work unit, they can often be presented with a fictitious picture of how the line manager performs or behaves and how the business unit is truly performing. Not having day-to-day physical contact as a line manager would normally have with their employees, makes monitoring and managing line manager performance extremely difficult for any distance manager. To be effective in distance management and be able to overcome the many unique challenges distance managers experience, middle managers need to work to a clear strategy, learn and use a new set of skills and implement policies and procedures that all line managers must adhere to.Putting into practice the strategy outlined in this short-book will help middle managers be more effective in managing business units at a distance.

Previous books of the Leadership Horizon Series showed unequivocally how both leaders and followers play an equally important part in the co-production of leadership outcomes, and how leader and follower identities are fluid, so that the same individual can enact both at different times. This book stretches the notion of leadership a step further by exploring the co-enactment of both roles, identities, and positions of leader and follower by one same individual. This individual is defined as a connecting leader, as in this co-enactment he/she functions as connector between different leadership relationships. The concept of connecting leader emerges from the observation that most individuals in organizations engage in the leader-follower role co-enactment: managers, pulled between executives and reportees; CEOs, between the board and the head of departments; or employees involved in cross functional teams, leading and following in different degrees, subject to their expertise. Yet, despite its pervasiveness this concept is at best under theorized by the literature, which, dominated by dyadic and romanticized views, mostly presents the roles as enacted by separate individuals facing each other. To advance our understanding of connecting leaders the editor proposes to shift our focus on leadership in three ways: to unpack the interconnectedness and interplay of leader and follower identities; to investigate the tensions arising from the co-enactment and how these can be overcome; to widen the way in which we study leadership, through new configurations (e.g. leadership triads) and ontologies; and finally to consider the similarities between leading and following. The book chapters are organized to mirror these areas of exploration. Understanding leadership from a perspective that acknowledges that many individuals in organizations are not just leaders or followers, but both, democratizes the way we theorize leadership, and moves us further away from the temptation to romanticize it.

To make the best decisions possible, middle leaders need to have a nuanced understanding of the consequences of their actions. In this pragmatic book, Adam Robbins aims to boost their role-specific expertise to help them achieve that goal - and offers them a preferable alternative to learning from their mistakes. Instead of relying on generic leadership theories, Middle Leadership Mastery collates perspectives from psychology and cognitive science to share evidence-informed guidance on a wide range of topics - from supporting staff and students in crisis and managing wellbeing, to quality-assuring teaching and curriculum design. Adam Robbins draws on his sixteen years' experience of teaching in a deprived area to illustrate his points with stories and anecdotes from the front line, demonstrating how middle leaders can better understand their context and deliver the best outcomes from a variety of starting points.

Managing Technology and Middle- and Low-Skilled Employees explores the rapidly changing use of digital and systems innovations in the management of specific sectors of the workforce in the modern workplace across different industrial contexts.

Middle Management Survival Guidec is intended to be a survival guide for anyone who calls him or herself a middle manager. All too often the wisdom that flows to the middle managers of this world descends from the lofty heights of academia. By point of contrast, Middle Management Survival Guide c flows from the trenches where middle managers carry out their craft. It is a book grounded in common sense and aimed at creating a world-view and mindset for middle managers that will enable them to better combat the daunting forces arrayed against them. From the perspective of a middle manager this survival guide describes the impossibility of the workplace and the paucity of the tools traditionally available to managers. Most importantly this book provides specific strategies, attitudes and values that will help managers maintain balance and sanity while improving their overall performance as managers. The author has worked as a middle manager for the past twenty years. Tasting both the sweet fruit of success as well as the bitter gall of failure he has acquired a unique insider's view of the daunting task faced by those who call themselves middle managers.